From inside the flap

The beam is an explosion inhibitor . . .

Something strange is going on inside the ruby colored beam of coherent light. Physicist Homer Layton has a theory that time runs marginally slower there. The beam is injecting a disturbance into time itself. His team has dubbed this phenomenon “the Layton Effect.” Combustible material will burn inside the beam —though with a lower flame — but will not flash. Nothing will explode. Homer plans a scholarly paper to be published in the journal, Science, a re-examination of the very nature of time. It’s going to be a blockbuster among physicists, he suspects, though probably just a curiosity to everyone else.

But then one of Homer’s assistants discovers that the Effect is propagated not by the beam itself but by the ruby chip and magnetic field used to focus it. And if the beam were ever to be aligned precisely with the earth’s magnetic field, the Effect could escape and suddenly become global. The thought of a Layton Effect world is too awful to consider. Guns and bombs would be rendered useless — that might be a plus — but no internal combustion engine could function. The technological progress of the past hundred years would effectively be repealed. They realize that their discovery must never be published, or some idiot would be bound to line up the beam.

But then a deteriorating geo-political situation makes them reconsider. The nuclear exchange that is about to happen will lead to an even worse outcome. Homer’s assistants build a “persistent effector,” a device that seeks out the earth’s field to inject the Effect onto it. With missiles incoming and outgoing, he turns the effector on.

But then what? Can civilization survive in a Layton Effect world? We’re about to find out.
About Dark World Chronicles:

The world has gone dark. Nothing works. Cars and trucks and airplanes and guns and bombs are nothing more than paperweights. A mysterious disturbance propagated onto the earth’s magnetic field has the effect of inhibiting all explosions. It has repealed most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, leaving the world as it was in your great great grandparents’ time.

The villain (or hero, depending on your perspective) who has made this happen is the physicist Homer Layton. He must be destroyed. And his stupid machine that injects the disturbance must be destroyed. Because without it we can never have another real war. This is unacceptable. Fortunes of treasure and innovation have been invested in war materiel, all of it now useless. Most people would like to have their cars and computers and televisions working again, but that’s not what really matters. What really matters is that governments cannot get on with the business of war. The power elites around the world have determined to track down Layton and his little colony of war opponents and smash them. Then the nuclear war that that was just about to happen when turned on his damnable machine can finally get started . . .

A Ruby Beam of Light (Excerpt)

CUBA LIBRE

Arlington, Virginia: In a
sub-basement conference room checked out to Colonel Kenneth Gustafson of the
Joint Chiefs, thirteen people were seated around an oval table. The only light
came from a low floor lamp in the corner. The occupants of the room were all
male, all middle-aged or older, all white, all fairly prosperous looking. Most
were somewhat overweight. The tone of the meeting was, for the moment at least,
spiritual:

“How long, O
Lord, how long?” Secretary Murdoch was cranking up his voice to the level of
Medium Oratorical. He would soon be on his feet, they all knew, and in full
swing. Lesser orators could use their eyes and hands and voices to make a
statement; Murdoch, when he really got going, could also sweat dramatically. He
was beginning to glisten now, greasily. “How long has it been, my Brothers,
that we’ve been gathering together in these very rooms to pray, and plan for a
brighter Tomorrow?”

There was a
murmur of response, no one quite sure whether to reply with a number of years
or the usual “Amen.” Marine Captain Courtenay simply echoed Murdoch’s “How
long?”

“How long
indeed, gentlemen? It has been long years. But they have been good ones too,
years in which we have transformed the face of this wicked city. When we began,
we were nobodies, powerless and out of favor. But we had Faith!”

“Faith!”
Courtenay again.

“We were imbued
with His Fire, the Gift of Tongues…” He lumbered to his feet.

“Yes, that’s
good, Bill. We had the gift.” Nolan Gallant interrupted. The secretary gaped,
jowls still quivering. But Gallant was not about to let him go on. There were
things to get done and no time right now for endless Holy Roller preaching.
Besides, it was Gallant who was the ordained minister, not Murdoch. “We had the
gift of tongues and all that. And now we count among our numbers a special
assistant to the President, a service Secretary, and a significant presence in
the Joint Chiefs…plus others of you gentlemen who have risen to positions of
authority and trust. We all know that.”

Gallant paused
to look at each of the twelve, the twelve disciples as he thought of them. It
was one of those pauses that invited no one else to speak. He stared them down.
Bill Murdoch was still on his feet, reluctant to give up the floor. Gallant
addressed him directly, “It’s time, I think, Mr. Secretary, to leave off the
praying for a bit and get on with the planning for a brighter tomorrow.”

“Just my
thought, Nolan. My thought exactly. I was just going to go on into the Lord’s
intentions in this Time of Trouble, and the ways in which His plan for each one
of us…”

“Yes. I’m sure
you were.” The Reverend Gallant displayed one of his famous Inspiration Hour
television smiles. He had a repertoire of such smiles from Delighted to Deeply
Disappointed. This one was cordial but a tad strained. Murdoch took his seat.
Gallant paused again. Off camera, as on, the Reverend Gallant had the air of a kindly
and wise high school principal. His sandy hair and apple-cheeks made him look
like a character right out of Norman Rockwell. He had a natural, fatherly
authority, so that those around him tended to take on automatically the role of
children awaiting instruction and correction. When he stopped to think his
important thoughts, they just waited. At the moment, he was thinking of an old
Jimmy Durante line, “Everybody’s always trying to get into the act.” Was it
possible that being a preacher was so much more amusing than being Secretary of
the Navy? How else to explain that Secretary Murdoch and even some of the
others were inclined to try their hands at evangelical oratory whenever he let
them? They were a bunch of frustrated revivalists. What a bore. He had to keep
reminding himself that everyone in this room was useful and necessary to the
grand plan. Otherwise he could have gladly dispensed with these now daily
meetings. A glance at Rupert Paule of the White House staff. “Rupert?”

“Thank you,
Nolan. Yes.” Paule picked up the sheaf of papers in front of him. He cleared
his throat. “Well, nothing really. I mean just nothing has happened since this
time yesterday.” He put the papers down again. “The President is…I think the
right word is ‘depressed’ by the option we’ve put in front of him. I don’t want
to psycho-babble you, but the truth is that he is using evasion tactics to
avoid facing up to the responsibility. We had some Cub Scouts come through the
White House yesterday, and the President had a few photos taken with a scout
from Florida who had saved this little girl from drowning. The whole thing was
booked for five minutes on the schedule. An hour and a half later he was still
talking to those twenty cub scouts about American liberties and I don’t know what
all else. He gave them almost the whole of the Abraham Lincoln at the
Crossroads speech. I had the O.F.D. team waiting in his office, all ready to
talk turkey. And he knew it. He held onto those kids until it was time for the
Dutch ambassador. He just doesn’t want to think about what we’re saying.”

The words came
out as a whine. Paule was used to squashing people who didn’t do what he
wanted. He was adroit enough at coddling the President, but it could be
frustrating work for a man of his natural inclinations. The White House advisor
was taking out his frustration as he spoke on the metal clip of a ball point
pen, working it back and forth in his hands. There were teeth marks as well,
Gallant could see, on the end of the barrel, and now that he noticed, there was
a tiny blue ink spot in the corner of Paule’s mouth.

“He is still
agonizing over the way the Honduras affair backfired,” Paul went on, continuing
to twist the pen. “He told me he has nightmares about it. I had to listen to
the whole thing again yesterday. I swear he had tears in his eyes. He said it
was supposed to be just like the Libyan incursion, just a nice simple surgical
strike. BOOM—in and out before anybody even knew it was happening. One little
hill town and a whole headquarters full of radical terrorists wiped off the
face of the earth. And then he would be on television saying that the Gloria
Verde leaders were big boys and they had to realize they were risking
consequences when they fooled around with a superpower nation. They should have
known we weren’t going to let them go moving into new territory and thumbing
their noses at us forever. He had his speech all written. And then before the
TV crews could even set up, there’s this obscene thing on Prince Edward Island.
Prince Edward Island, for gods sake! What a stupid place for Texaco to have its
stupid directors meeting anyway. It’s not even in America. We had to call the
CIA just to find out where the stupid island is. So our goddam strike force is
not even home yet and all of a sudden we’ve got the whole board of directors of
Texaco blown away by a bomb.”

“Made to look
like it was planted by some group of environmental crazies,” Gallant filled in
the now familiar details. “Only it wasn’t an environmental group that set the
bomb, of course. Was it?”

“Of course, it
wasn’t. It was just made to look that way. It was the Cubans. As if we couldn’t
guess. Same as the October incident. We take some action they don’t like and
they hit back somewhere else, but all covered up so the public doesn’t see the
connection. Only we know what they’re up to. A little slap on the wrist to make
us stop. They’re goddam training us. We could eat them alive if they ever stood
up to us directly, but who the hell was even thinking about Texaco? And our
beautiful surgical strike simply ruined by…”

“That’s all
water over the dam, Rupert. The President has just got to look at the future
now, not the past.”

“That’s easy to
say, Nolan. But it really shook him up. He’s going to go down in the history
books as ‘the man who lost Texaco.’ That’s what he’s thinking.”

“He’s going to
go down in history as the man who stood up to Evil. If, that is, if he does
what is required of him now. It’s up to us to make sure he does what is
required of him.”

He pause to
scan the faces around the table. “We find ourselves at a rare moment in
history, gentlemen, with our enemies in disarray. Of course they’re not
helpless. But they’re weak. It is this country and this country alone that has
capacity for strategic action. It is essential that we use this very temporary
moment of ascendancy to cement our power. Because our enemies are not likely to
be weak forever.” Gallant looked over at Colonel Gustafson, who obviously had
something to say. “Ken?”

“It hurts me to
say this, Nolan: The President is the shakiest part of our Cuba plan. He’s our
President and I love and respect him, but I wonder if he’s up to it. The man
gets all fired up when he talks about the heroes of America’s past,
particularly Lincoln. Only you get the feeling that he really doesn’t aspire to
be a Lincoln, he would be content to be a Tyler or a Fillmore. We’re asking him
to make some hard decisions. What he’d really like to do is muddle through
without making any decisions at all and then retire to write his memoirs.”

There were sad
nods around the room. “We’d all like to avoid these decisions,” said Nolan.
“They are the bitter cup that will not pass, in the words of Our Lord.”

Gustafson once
more: “We’ve just got to stiffen his resolve. I think you’ve got to go in
yourself and talk to him again, Nolan. The man has got fervor that needs to be
brought to the surface. You can make him see the inevitability of what he has
to do. Inevitability is the key. That will be very comforting to him, to see
that he is being steered by the hand of God. It won’t be his decision at all.
The last time you got to him, he was a David, looking for a Goliath to slay. He
had lights in his eyes.”

“That was,
unfortunately, just when he gave the go-ahead on Honduras,” said Paule sourly.

Gallant exploded.
“Don’t give me this ‘unfortunately’ shit! The whole Honduras / Texaco incident
has worked out exactly right for our purposes. We couldn’t have planned it
better if we’d tried. If the Cubans had just stood back and let us get away
with wiping up their surrogates, we could end up pussy-footing and surgical
striking for the rest of our lives. Meanwhile the bleeding hearts would be
plundering the defense budget. We’d never get on with our mission.”

Captain
Courtenay had his hand up. Courtenay was part of the White House security team,
and for some reason was also something of a confidant of the President. During
his bouts of insomnia, the Chief Executive would wander down to the little
dormitory that had been made up in the basement for security people, and wake
Courtenay up and pour out his thoughts to him, sometimes for hours at a time.
These conversations were dutifully reported back to Nolan Gallant and the
disciples. Gallant gave him the nod.

“Thank you,
sir. The President is depressed, just like Mr. Paule said, sir. You might think
that what has got him down is the carping of the press or of the left liberal
Democrats. But he doesn’t really bump into very much of that. I mean, the
summaries he receives in the morning have been pretty well cleaned up, and he
doesn’t read them anyway. What gets him down is anything from inside the
administration that contradicts what we’re telling him. If we could keep the
State Department people out for instance…” There was a grumble of annoyance
around the table. “Well, that would be a help. There is also this Cornell
business. That’s really got him down.”

At least half
the people in the room looked blankly at Courtenay. They weren’t all in the
know about the Cornell project. Gallant looked to Colonel Gustafson again to
fill them in.

“The Cornell
Project,” Gustafson began. “Right. Simula, they call it, a big computer program
that is supposed to guide us through disarmament negotiations. They designed it
to tell us how many MXs, for example, it’s worth giving up if we can get such
and such a number of SS-24s destroyed in return.” Gustafson was shaking his
head. “I still can’t believe we did this to ourselves. It’s our own goddamn
project, the brainchild of one of General Buxtehude’s young hotshots. The guy
goes off to a seminar on the wonders of computing and comes home convinced that
we have to build ourselves a computerized ‘crystal ball.’ He says it will be
able to predict the relative strength of all the powers for any given level of
reduction. Anyway, Gordon gets this professor at Cornell to undertake the
project. The professor had submitted a funding request for a couple of million
dollars for a computerized study of…oh, I don’t know what, the sex life of
beetles or some such thing. But Gordon makes him accept this other project too.
Because the guy is an expert on simulation. Anybody else would have taken the
money and never bothered us with any results, but, just our luck, this
professor actually builds the crystal ball.

“What he comes
up with is a kind of computerized war-game. We tell it what weapons are left at
each stage of reduction, and then it figures out whether we come out ahead or
behind if there is a conflict just then. It simulates all the possible ways the
weapons might be used. We get a printout of each scenario it considers. The
printouts are very detailed; they show losses of people and equipment and cost.
Some of them are really grim. The purpose of the program is to evaluate the
balance of power with changing force levels, but it can also be used to test
out any kind of strategic hypothesis.”

Murdoch looked
perplexed. “So what? What does that have to do with anything?”

“The trouble is
that the program is a hell of a lot more inventive than any of the real
players. It imagined up this whole idea of strategic arms being transferred to
off-shore groups. Suppose there’s a nominally independent terrorist group, it
says, and some old Red Army generals slip a few missiles to it. Suppose they
let the group be controlled by the Cubans, just to obscure responsibility. Then
the old generals drop a hint to the Cubans and the Cubans drop a hint to the
proxies, and the proxies act. The result is that there is an effective counter
to actions that we might take, just like the old days. And the generals and the
Cubans retain some power.

“Of course,
there’s no proof that the groups have strategic capability,” Gustafson went on,
“but it is possible. The program assumes it’s true and then simulates what kind
of response there might be to any action we take. It used to be the President
would ask Gordon or ask me when he wondered what kind of grief we might get
from the other side for doing X, Y, or Z. And we would tell him, ‘no sweat.’
But now he looks at the scenarios that the Cornell program prints out. The
result is that the President is increasingly unwilling to do X, Y, or Z. He’s
unwilling to do much of anything, because of the projected responses.”

“Can’t we get
them to stop sending in the results?” This commonsensical piece of advice came
from Paule’s assistant, Taylor Hodge.

“Well, that’s
the idea,” said Gustafson. “We are dropping some broad hints. But you know how
these things work. The universities tend to be pretty independent. We obviously
can’t assassinate the professor and his staff.” A long silence. He looked around
the table uneasily, sensing that this might not be obvious to anyone in the
room except himself.

Captain
Courtenay picked up again. “Anyway, the results of the Cornell simulations are
really taking the stuffing out of the President. We could tell him to ignore
the reports, we could say that they aren’t accurate, but unfortunately, they
ran a simulation of the Honduras strike just before it happened, and the
computer predicted almost exactly what happened. It said the Cubans would act
immediately to discourage us from such actions. It predicted they would use an
independent group, probably an extremist environmental organization, to attack
some part of our private sector. The public would think it had been the radical
greens. But we would know. It would be a message to us that this is the kind of
thing that will happen whenever we move onto their turf. Just our luck, the
State Department had a copy of the simulation scenario and was looking at it
prior to the attack. The Secretary of State keeps reminding us of that,
reminding the President, I mean.”

“The Secretary
is a coward,” Murdoch muttered. He seldom missed a chance to say a bad word
about State.

Gallant agreed.
“He is a coward and an atheist. Maybe those two terms are synonymous.” The
twelve chuckled dutifully. “I think I know what you’re going to say next,
Captain Courtenay. But go ahead and say it.”

“Yes sir. Well,
there are all these scenarios that Cornell has sent in since Honduras. They
project the response to our Cuba Libre plan…”

“Of course the
Cornell people don’t know anything about Cuba Libre. I am right in assuming
that, aren’t I?”

“Yes sir. They
don’t. But they have some ideas of their own for what we might be considering,
and one of them is nearly bang on. When the President sees what the projected
response is to our plan, well he is…” Courtenay paused at the distasteful word,
“frightened.”

“Mmmm. What is
the projected response, if I may ask.”

“Uh…” Captain
Courtenay hesitated. He was having a moment of doubt about the propriety of
sharing the details.

Gallant snapped
at him. “What is the response, Captain? Let’s have it.”

“Yes sir.
They’re projecting that if we did proceed with Cuba Libre or its equivalent,
one of the off-shore groups would react. They would, um, target a small nuclear
missile on one American city. They’d tie it directly to our action and give a
long enough warning to empty the city. It would be a kind of…of punishment.”

The room had
the uneasy feel that comes when people stop breathing all at once. Gallant
hurried to fill in the silence. “I don’t doubt that this is what the Cornell
group is predicting. It will never happen, however. The response to Cuba Libre
is going to be total confusion in Havana. We all know that in this room, no
matter what the little professors are saying. I wish the Cubans would try to
take out one of our cities. That’s when they’d get a rude shock. They have no
idea what state the Shield is in.”

The words
effected a sudden transformation of their mood. The reminder of the Shield,
their secret triumph, brought on a righteous gladness to replace the tension of
the last few minutes. Murdoch settled back with a contented smile and folded
his hands on his ample stomach. “A rude shock indeed. One minute an attacking
missile, armed and soaring, and the next minute nothing. And then…”

“And then…”
Gallant took over, “then, how the world is changed, my friends. From that
moment on, it’s 1950 all over again. We can strike and nobody can strike back.
That’s hegemony, gentlemen. With us in control. And the forces of Evil made
impotent.” Gallant was still smiling. He was always smiling. Yet everyone in
the room knew that he was angry. He spit his words and still did not stop
smiling. “They will feel our wrath. In the words of the Lord to Moses, I will
spend my arrows upon them; they shall be wasted with hunger and devoured with
burning heat and poisonous pestilence. What a different world that will be,
gentlemen. Triumph for our beloved nation, and ‘burning heat and poisonous
pestilence’ for our enemies. Not just for Cuba, but for all our enemies. And we
are going to make it happen.”

“Hegemony,”
Murdoch rolled the word off his tongue. It had a narcotic effect on him and on
the rest of the room. “Jesus. We really are going to turn this poor old world
around after all. Put it back the way it was intended to be. We really are.”

There was a
chorus of agreement, a swell of sound as they all began talking at once.
Several of the disciples were on their feet. Edmund Tolliver from the National
Security Council had his hand on Gallant’s arm. Gallant smiled on solidly. He
hated to be touched. Tolliver was grinning like an idiot. Gallant looked him
square in the face and the man blushed. He mumbled ‘Amen’ and turned around
looking for his chair. Over the years, you learn the techniques of prying their
hands off you with nothing more than a look.

Gallant slapped
the table for their attention. When they had quieted themselves, he went on.
“The Shield, gentlemen, the Shield that we have labored so long and hard to see
to its current state of efficacy, it is the Shield that will be the instrument
of His hand. The Shield that you have breathed life into will be for our
generation the Ark of the Covenant.” He was aware of some excess of metaphor
there, but the others were caught in the enthusiasm of the moment. Courtenay
repeated, “The Ark!”

Only the day
before, the Reverend Gallant had picked up a slender handbook of meeting
management at the People’s Drug Store on Wisconsin Avenue. He had read it cover
to cover before turning in last night. The book emphasized shaping each meeting
to its objectives, and Gallant went over his objectives again now as the others
waited. He lifted his hands, palms upward. “We are the Bearers of the Shield,
my friends. They laughed at our ‘Star Wars’ defense, but we did not flinch.
They canceled our funding, but we persevered. We did without and steered secret
funds into the project. We steeled ourselves against their rebuke, against
their ridicule. And now we have placed into orbit three truly Heavenly Bodies.”

He paused for
them to appreciate the nice turn of phrase that described the Hard Body laser
interceptor satellites as ‘Heavenly Bodies.’ They chimed in their sounds of
approval. In truth any allusion to the HBs would have gotten a warm reaction
from this group. Even Congress did not know that the HBs were in orbit. But the
disciples knew. The knowledge made them feel important and powerful. They
purred at the very thought of the HBs.

“Those three
bodies, as you know, are the protectors of our great nation. But what does it
avail us to have the Shield if we are fearful of using it? The mood in this
country is one of appeasement. People are giddy at the prospect of living in
peace and harmony with the other side. As though that were ever possible. The Soviet
Union has collapsed, but have its weapons gone away? No. They are still there,
still controlled by the same hands that controlled them a decade ago. A year
from now or less, our own strategic strength will be tragically weakened. If we
are to act, it must be now. That is what Cuba Libre is for. If the forces of
evil submit, so be it. If they resist, we will show our hand, show them the
Shield. And then, having rebuffed their piddling attack, we will strike back.
In the words of Jeremiah, Her cities shall become a desolation, with no
inhabitant in them. The destroyer shall come upon every city, and no city shall
escape; the valley shall perish, and the plain shall be destroyed…” .

“All that is
required of us now is to keep to our resolve. To persevere, gentlemen, in the
path of righteousness. To stay the course: Cursed is he who does the work of
the Lord with slackness; and cursed is he who keeps back his sword from
bloodshed. That is written in Jeremiah: 48, 10, and I know it to be true. It is
written for us.”

Gallant had
learned on the stump over three decades ago that there is a doubting Thomas in
every audience. You can always count on him to raise a timorous voice, just as
the most glorious vision of a new order has been spoken. If you’re ready for him,
you can use him like a shill. The doubting Thomas today was the young fellow
Paule had recruited from Treasury, Gallant could never remember his name. He
had a high whining voice:

“I’m just
wondering about our timing, fellows. That’s all. I mean, I don’t doubt that the
HBs will work eventually when we’ve got them perfected, and when we’ve got
enough of them in place. But the press was always going on about how the whole
notion of the Shield was flawed and how it couldn’t work at all, or at least
not with the current state of technology. And I’m just wondering if this might
not be a bit early to start goading anyone. I mean, we could be wrong, couldn’t
we? We’re only human, aren’t we? Maybe the Shield won’t hold…well, I’m just
thinking about all those lives.”

Gallant smiled
tolerantly. “We are only human. How true. We can be wrong. How profound are
those words. But the Lord is not only human and He cannot be wrong. What are we
afraid of my friends? That we may act as the unwitting workers of His will?
That we might be the tools of His perfection by fire of human society? Can
Armageddon come without His permission? And if it comes, and behind it the
second appearance of Our Savior, then which of us, looking back, will be able
to regret the enabling actions we are taking here today?”

He affected a
sudden tiredness. “But who am I to give you strength if you are weak? I am just
a country preacher from the hill country, a child of poor humble people. I’ve
held the floor for too long, my friends. Perhaps I was wrong to speak up at
all. Perhaps our senior member, Secretary Murdoch, could favor us with a short
passage from the good book, and then, Mr. Secretary, you might give us your own
instruction, inspired by that passage?”

“Well, of
course, Nolan. Of course.” Murdoch reached for his bible.

“If I could
just suggest, Bill, starting with the 6th verse of Exodus 15?”

“An excellent
choice, Nolan,” said the Secretary, though he had not the foggiest notion of
what Exodus 15 might have to say. “I couldn’t have chosen better myself.” The
Reverend Gallant closed his eyes as Secretary Murdoch began to read:

The Secretary
checked it again to be sure he’d got it right. “Well. Yes, ‘stubble,’ as it
says. That was…Nolan, that was, I think, just the right choice. Stubble. Well.
Reflecting on that passage in these Times of Trouble, might we not be led to
ask aloud, How long, O Lord, how long…”

Gallant had set out four
objectives for the meeting. The first three had been no trouble at all. He’d
given direct instructions to General Archer’s attaché and to the undersecretary
for Defense. They had enough influence in the Pentagon to pull off nearly
anything in the short run. The fourth objective was a rather delicate one,
though. He was going to have to go himself, as Gustafson had said, to talk to
the President, to put some backbone into the man. Getting in was not a problem:
Rupert Paule had control of the President’s schedule. It would have to be on
the QT, as the press would howl bloody murder at the President lending an ear
to Nolan Gallant just before the Vienna talks. But leave it to Paule to take
care of that.

The difficult
part was to figure out just what to say to the President. He was sure the man
didn’t have the gumption to flirt with Armageddon. As the others were leaving,
Gallant took Paule and Hodge off into the adjacent office and explained his
concerns. Hodge was a born intriguer. Gallant put the question to him directly.
“Taylor, tell me, what is the best way to approach the President?”

Hodge reflected
a moment. “It’s the judgment of history that is on the President’s mind now,”
he said. “His nightmare is that history will view him as a blunderer who
muddied the waters and let a major American corporation be blown away in the
confusion of his own ill-advised adventuring. But if you could just plant the
suggestion that it’s the Cubans who have muddied the waters, that history will
see that an adroit President acted swiftly and courageously to profit from
their ill-advised adventuring…”

“I see. I see.
It was our side that was just waiting for them to provide the opportunity. The
cowardly attack on Texaco was our opening.”

“Exactly.
Operation Cuba Libre was ready for them. And he will be remembered as the man
who got Cuba back for us.”

“But it’s been
weeks since the Honduras strike and the counterattack on Texaco. Our action now
is hardly a lightning response.”

“Who’s to say
that? Cuba Libre could be pulled off within ten days. The plan is simple. It
requires almost no people, and damn little equipment. From the perspective of
next month it’s going to look like an instantaneous response. And it’s going to
catch our friends in Havana flat-footed.” Hodge looked relaxed and confident.
He had no doubts at all. “They’re going to…how shall I say it, to…”

“…piss in their
britches,” Gallant finished up.

“Nicely put,”
said Hodge.

In the back of his black
limousine, Gallant went back over the meeting. The ways of the Lord are beyond
the comprehension of mere mortal men. He leadeth us to lie down with total
idiots, to suffer the Murdochs and Tollivers of the world, the fawning little
people placed upon earth for reasons that no man could discover. He calleth
upon us to take some surprising steps. On occasion, He even leadeth us to tell
a few Whoppers.

He considered
options for discrediting the Cornell simulations. Little lies, he decided, are
for little men. He would look the President right in the eye and tell him that
the Cornell data was fudged, that they had concocted their Honduras
‘simulation’ after the fact and postdated it. He would say that the Secretary
of State was a party to the forgery. The implication would not be lost on the
President: The State Department was trying to increase its power by using these
counterfeit scenarios. They were trying to frighten the President, to make him
incapable of acting in a time when courageous action was called for.

It would work.
The President might try to weasel out of his duty, but would be no match for
Gallant. He had the man by his spiritual balls. Within two weeks Cuba Libre
would be a fait accompli.

Power politics
is heady stuff. It can have a positively erotic effect. The moving of troops,
the plotting of bold strokes, he knew, would give some men an erection. For
Gallant, the effect was different; it only made him hungry. He tapped on the
glass screen of the limo and signaled the driver to turn in at Kentucky Fried
Chicken just ahead.